


a flickering flame

by sevastre



Category: Bakemonogatari
Genre: Abstract, F/M, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:40:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevastre/pseuds/sevastre
Summary: Senjougahara knows what it's like to be a captive.





	a flickering flame

Kaiki Deishu is a man of malevolent grace, so they say. He doesn't walk, he prowls- (though some might say that he simply walks with the hunched demeanor of a tired middle aged con artist with bad posture); his gaze is as lightless and fathomless as the sun eclipsed by a blood-red moon-- or so they say. The sharpness of his face speaks of a shrewd mind (or a greedy heart, some may say), and the way he speaks-- 

“Kai--” she says, sibilant and soft. 

“Like a mound of clamshells,” he replies-- 

the way he speaks, (slow and droning, thick, dark sap weeping from a wound carved deep into a tree, exposing heartwood as crimson and rich as flesh) 

“--ki,” she whispers, and no force on heaven or hell or earth would ever consent to admitting that Hitagi Senjougahara’s voice just cracked, just lilted a little too far on the side of begging, because Senjougahara would never, ever beg for anyone-- 

“Like a dead tree,” he finishes dryly, and stands. “Good girl.” 

There are rope welts that stand out starkly against his long white fingers, across his palms. The moonlight washes out all the other colors in his skin, and in the dark glint of her long hair. An endless row of panelled windows stretch monotonously on and on into the distance, some broken, some foggy with age and dust. The broken panes rattle ominously, in the wind, until Kaiki shuts the door behind him. Fences the both of them in-- hello, Senjougahara, it’s just you and me now. Just a friendly chat. Nothing to write home about.

The first light flickers on. She prefers it this way, this half-secretive play; a mockery of one act segueing into another. Kaiki has learned her intricacies, her little fits of pique and pettiness, and he has found her sorely lacking. Whatever ceaseless fire once drove her has now been soured, sullied into cooling content, and she has but one thing to blame: that half-breed boy from a boring, mundane life, with a boring, mundane charm that oddities, women, and men alike seem to flock to. Kaiki has no feelings towards him especially. Kaiki has never had feelings towards anything that failed to benefit him in some way or another. It’s a waste of his time. 

Senjougahara looks up at him from beneath the lone source of light hidden somewhere close to the ground. It casts a single radiant beam across his features, blinding him but leaving her with the ability to scrutinize his face with ease. It’s uncomfortable, but she likes the dramatic impact better. As to how she was able to coerce him into putting on a play like this for any amount of money (as if any amount of money she would pay to make him grovel would be enough, well…)

She seems to know what he’s thinking. “Doesn’t this make Araragi all the more compelling?” she asks, and she shifts forward in her seat, far enough that she catches her entire body against her roped restraints. “I think you'd like to know what makes him so captivating. I'd like you to know why, so you, too, might be tamed.” Her gaze is ardent, and defiant beyond reasonable means. She likes hiding her insecurities behind bravado and faux-righteous arrogance, he’s learned. Nothing about her is true any longer. She's learned to lie to herself in lieu of searching for the truth. Of course her attraction to a boy with a savior complex (and not all that much else, in his very humble opinion) is because of his irresistible charm; of course she would throw down her life for him because he makes her feel clever. Even a girl who holds herself as aloof and on another plane of existence needs a sycophant; even if secretly beneath all her bluster and her cold gaze of ice, Hitagi Senjougahara doesn’t believe herself worthy of much at all. Of course Araragi would appeal to her.

He sighs-- a world-weary, theatrical sound-- and fixes her with a dull stare, pacing his way out of the light. “I think you like the idea of being owned by such a boring thing, Senjougahara. When the whole world has treated you like everything but, it makes normal palatable and desirable. I don't care for being tamed much… it wreaks havoc on my financials.” Kaiki isn't one to fidget, but he makes a show of examining the marks on his hands-- already faded to a light pink. “And I suppose you come to me to establish that you aren't ever truly owned by him, or anyone who saw fit to put you into little categories that hurt your complex sensibilities to be sorted into. You'd like to prove them wrong, and that you chose this for yourself. You're just like his little sister, you know. A little spitfire, stupid and giddily drunk off of the destructive force that youth lends her. His own fledgling arbiter of justice, out to fix the world one con man at a time.”

He stops, right behind her, and smiles humorlessly. “He should be proud that his sisters take after him so much, even if he throws fits and claims otherwise…. They fix people, ultimately, for no price at all except their hearts, and claim that they charge nothing at all.” His voice is cutting by the end of his sentence.”Perhaps that’s why he favors you so: you're the perfect doll for him to fix. Why else would he love a girl as deliberately cruel and emotionally stunted as you?” 

Her eyes flash, and she jerks compulsively in her restraints-- a lie, a mockery; she could cut the rope into a hundred pieces if she wanted to-- but he grabs a handful of her long, thick hair and cruelly pulls hard, his eyes narrowing. Her milky white thighs twitch and jump against the seat of the chair, the tops of her stockings cutting just the barest hint into her flesh, and she kicks a little, but he's done his work well. Her calves are tied firmly to their own separate legs on the chair, and her arms tied firmly against one another and over the back of the chair. Her eyes are watering from the force of how hard he’s pulling, but she stays defiantly quiet. 

“Hush when I'm talking,” he chides, almost bored, and relaxes his grip, letting her silken hair slide through his fingers with a look of disdain. He almost regrets the action when she instantly slumps forward, taking away the arch of her back and the way her body filled against the gaps in the intricate lattice of rope-work around her chest. He notes everything with an almost clinical, detached gaze, especially because he knows it embarrasses her to be the subject of such a blatant display, and paces back to her front.

She finally averts her eyes, and he can see her thighs twitch again, wanting to close. Her earlier movements have hiked her pleated skirt up by several inches, higher and higher. This time, his smile is genuine.

“Gahara-san,” he says, the endearment a sacred, precious thing now used mockingly, “Are you listening to me now?” 

“You have a captive audience,” she replies, and coolly lifts her head to toss her hair back. “I'm beginning to think you do talk for your own health; it's the only way someone with a voice like yours could ever stand to hear it for this long.” She's shivering.

“You’re losing your touch,” he says, and his gaze darkens. “That insult wasn’t even worth wasting the time to listen to.” He hooks one foot under the metal leg of the bright red school chair and kicks out, hard. Senjougahara falls like she’s falling in a dream: her hair fans out, dark as bruised violets. The beautifully blank nonchalance of her gaze betrays no emotion, the infinitesimal gape in her pale pink lips barely slackens her features-- before Kaiki just as casually stops her descent by grabbing onto the back of the chair. She gazes up at him through the silken gaps of her hair, her chest rising and falling calmly, like a drum. 

“If you leave a bruise, I’ll kill you,” she says. With his free hand, no evident appearance of strain despite the fact that he’s supporting the full weight of her body and the chair, he brushes the hem of her skirt just a centimeter higher. Gleaming steel. The sharpened point of a protractor. Another centimeter: the unassuming triangle-tip of a pair of scissors. A metal ruler. Pencils whose points are so sharp that he can’t see where they end and where empty space begins. 

“I thought I saw something earlier,” Kaiki replies. “Being stabbed is hard on the wallet. I’ll have to replace this suit. Clean the blood off of the floor.”

She remains silent. Both of them know during these little meetings of theirs, in clandestine, abandoned, liminal spaces, there is an unspoken truce. Their enmity is as numbered and as dead as the dust under their feet.

“Tell me why we do this again,” Senjougahara says. With her tone, everything is a demand. “Why I demand that you tell me the truth, piece by piece, until I understand what you did to me.”

“I broke apart your family,” he replies, his tone dry and remorseless. “I told you the truth, threw off your fetters, and curiously-- very curiously-- you bind yourself with more of your own making, like two magnets rushing to join back together as soon as they’re brought close.”

“Jealousy is unbecoming of you.” 

“Who am I jealous of?” 

His grip on the chair slackens, and she falls the rest of the way. It’s a soft landing. A tatami has broken her fall, with a simple asanohana patterned quilt laid out on top of it. She rubs at her wrists, previously bound behind her, and the rope trails loose-- cut cleanly by one of her scissors. 

“Araragi. Isn’t it obvious? You think he’s going to be just like my mother.” She curls in on herself, her legs still bound to the chair. “Tell me if it’s true.”

“That has nothing to do with jealousy.” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

The look he gives her, looking at her pale, smooth skin in the candlelight and the gleaming silk of her hair, is expressionless. “You’re old enough to decide now. The ties you choose to bind yourself with are now what you make yourself.”

She says nothing in response, but flinches at his words. The sliding-screen doors behind them, covered with thin paper, open. He turns to leave. 

“Kaiki.” 

He stops. 

“...I won’t thank you for what you did. You’re still a terrible, greedy man, and you’ve hurt even more people by assuming that your word is--”

“God’s,” he finishes, and sighs. “I don’t believe in gods. I believe in foolishness, and in the malleability of human hearts.” The wind ruffles his hair. “Good night, Senjougahara.”

**Author's Note:**

> A few parting words:
> 
> I haven't written fic in about four to five years, so this is mostly an examination into characterization. Hitagi is a hard one to get right. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
